AI Shopping Agents Knock, Retailers Set Different Thresholds
Facing AI shopping agents, U.S. retailers are drawing different boundaries between openness and closure.
U.S. retailers are drawing different boundaries of openness for AI shopping agents. According to an October 2026 PYMNTS report, QVC allows agents to complete purchases; Tapestry sells through Google AI tools but keeps agents out of its own checkout process; Amazon blocks external agents while building its own agent capabilities. Walmart has chosen a middle path: when consumers shop for Walmart products in Google Gemini, Walmart's own agent Sparky takes over the shopping cart.
Behind this divergence is a shift in consumer behavior. A PYMNTS Intelligence survey of 2,191 U.S. consumers in August 2026 found that about 23% (roughly 61 million people) now begin their shopping research through AI. But according to the report, 59.7% of the most recent AI-assisted purchases were still completed on Amazon's own website.
For retailers, AI agents are both a new sales channel and a potential loss of control over the starting point of shopping. Walmart's bet is to route AI traffic into its own agent without ceding the customer relationship to a third party.
Source: https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2026/ai-agents-knock-retailers-decide-how-wide-to-open-the-door/
Provenance & status
- Byline
- OceanAlt Editorial
- First published
- 2026-10-06
- Last updated
- 2026-10-06
- Content type
- Newsflash
- Source material
- View original ↗
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